It's hard to imagine these days what the LSU-Tulane football
rivalry was like 40 years ago. In the hours before the 7:30 p.m. kickoff, traffic around
the old Tulane Stadium on the Green Wave's Uptown campus snaked into paralysis.

Tulane fans, who trudged up to the stadium, were yoked with
24-straight joyless encounters in the "Battle for the Rag"—the title of the
in-state series between the two teams. LSU had won or tied every game against Tulane each year since Nov. 27, 1948.

But that Tigers streak didn't take anything off the heat of
the rivalry. It consumed the Big Easy during game week.

Former Tulane sports information director Bill Curl said he
got the idea of how intense the rivalry was after attending a men's club
meeting in the city.

"One side of the room was all decorated in green and one
side was all decorated in purple and there was a line down the middle and they
were really getting after each other across the aisle," Curl recalled. "I went
up to one guy and said, 'This is a really good idea to do this but what about
the guys that don't care?' He looked me dead in the face and said, 'What do you
mean?' That told me that if you lived in this city that week you picked sides.
You had to go with one of them. It was fun, it was really a kick."

The numbers backed up the anecdote.

"Long before the last stragglers in the record-breaking
crowd of 86,340 made their way to their
seats, the old stadium was rocking with noise and excitement," Will Peneguy of
the Times-Picayune wrote for the Dec. 2, 1973 edition.

It was the largest crowd to gather for a night football game
ever at that point in time.

The game was ruled by defensive stops and heavy crowd
emotion. A packed press box shared the mood, Curl said.

"The press box was jamming about 210 people," Curl said. "It
was an open-air press box. You very much felt the emotion of the crowd."

And the fans ripped, roared and moaned as the teams
struggled to move the ball against each other. Even then-Gov. Edwin Edwards was
there, spending the first half with the LSU fans and the second half with the
guys and gals in Olive and Blue.

When Tulane made the final stop in its 14-0 victory that
ended LSU's streak, Green Wave fans cried, cheered and some just sat stunned. Tulane
had finally earned the state's bragging rights.

"It was emotional. We were split 50-50 with LSU fans and
Tulane fans," Curl said. "After the game, most of the Tulane fans stood there
and cheered for another hour. The morning afterward, 6:30 in the morning ... there
were people in the stadium who came back in and sat in the same seats they sat
in the night before."

Even Curtis Johnson, Tulane's current coach, was pulling for
the Green Wave. He grew up in the River Parishes.

"I was an underdog and I would say Tulane was always the
underdog so I went for Tulane," Johnson said. "I call my son opposite man, so I
was opposite man back then."

Back then, most everyone had an opinion. These days, the
younger generation New Orleanians often root for both LSU and Tulane –
unthinkable for the older generations who remember seeing the yearly rivalry
play out like a city war on Saturdays.

"I was listening to the radio and at that time they had a
traffic report from a plane and the guy
in the plane was a Tulane fan and the guy down on the ground who was talking to
him at the radio station was an LSU fan," Curl recalled. "They talked more
about the game then they did about the traffic, it was really funny. It was
fun."

But it's unlikely the city will ever see such a dramatic
split again. It's possible, though, Curl said.

"It can happen but it will take a long time," Curl said. "That
was something that developed over years and generations in traditions and those
things don't come back easily. But certainly there are a lot of people who
still get excited about it if the two of them were even to play in an obscure
sport. But certainly the baseball rivalry is good but to bring back that whole
city-wide feeling? The city has changed. It's not so dominated by Tulane and LSU people
as it was back then so it would be wonderful if it could, it would be great but
it will take a while."

The teams haven't played since 2009. The series, which the
Tigers lead 69-22-7, broke off after LSU wanted
all the remaining games to be played in Baton Rouge. It bought out Tulane to
break the contract and guaranteed one future game in New Orleans. But the
schools haven't agreed to that date yet, putting in idle the series (broken
along the way) that began in 1893.

Johnson said he is open to resuming the rivalry but said his
rebuilding job is ongoing

"LSU, they've gone in that direction with what they do and
how they are doing it," Johnson said. "They've gone in a very high, high
dollar, high direction. We have to start catching up. We have to start catching
up with players sooner or later. We're getting our own stadium like them. We
have to start catching up.

"I don't want to say, here comes this big challenge
with LSU – that's not where we are right now, we're just trying to win a game
here," Johnson said. "It's going to take a while to really get back to catching them because if
you look at back then, LSU and Tulane were recruiting the same guys. Tulane was in the SEC but now, it's a little bit different so we
have some ground to make up. But we're starting to gain some ground."